Sunday, January 15, 2012

Children Welcome!

Most alcohol-related sites on the web have an age gate. It's all honor system, but you must at least claim you are of legal drinking age to get in.

There's a good reason for this. The purpose of those sites is to persuade visitors to buy a certain alcohol product. All alcohol producers pledge not to market their products to underage persons, and contrary to the calumnies of the Neo-Prohibitionists, the vast majority of alcohol producers honor that pledge in good faith. Hence the age gates.

Some booze bloggers also label their sites 'for adults only.' That's their prerogative, but The Chuck Cowdery Blog has a different attitude.

You may be too young to drink alcoholic beverages but you're never to young to learn.

What you read here will be factual, honest, and suitable for persons of all ages. Childhood is not a permanent condition and most of it is spent preparing for adulthood. If you are underage, it is for many reasons in your best interest to obey the law, but by all means drink deeply of the cup of knowledge, and do so early and often.

Young people should be encouraged to eschew alcohol until they reach legal drinking age, but you won't accomplish that by pretending alcohol doesn't exist. If all they get is the ham-handed and dishonest anti-alcohol messages contained in most youth alcohol awareness programs, that alone may drive them prematurely to imbibe.

So don't drink, kids. And say no to drugs. And you might want to watch your caffeine and sugar intake too. But by all means, read.

And if this post, and especially the picture, infuriates some Neo-Prohibitionists, that's a bonus.

4 comments:

Justin Victor
said...

Another winner of a post Chuck. I completely agree. If you don't introduce your kids to alcohol, someone else will. I hope to pass on the same attitudes I learned from my upbringing: an attitude of moderation, control, and a sense of time and place for alcohol.

Hey Chuck, small suggestion... I notice you use the Blogger platform but you have it set to open a new page for comments. There is a way you can set it to pop up a mini window for the comments which saves on load times and allows the commenter to scroll the post too. I've set up my blog that way and prefer it. If you do, great. If not, I'll deal haha.

Agreed. I'm 20 and drink bourbon pretty regularly. I've no interest in getting drunk / partying, I just love whiskey. My girlfriend and I will usually avoid parties and instead buy a nice whiskey and have a night in. Blogs like this do a great job of informing us and doing reviews we can compare our impressions to.